Cymatics in TouchDesigner

Cymatics are an amazing phenomenon created by resonant waves, which cause sand or other small particles to form beautiful, self-organized patterns. A very common example of cymatics are Chladni plates, a special case of this cool effect!

In this tutorial, we will first understand what cymatics are and how they function, then use simple math and GLSL shaders to implement an interactive version of the system in TouchDesigner! Finally, we will create a lightweight particle system (from scratch) that will be used to render our patterns, and make it audio-reactive 🙂

Paul Bourke Website: https://paulbourke.net/geometry/chladni/

Find me online!
My portfolio: https://lakeheckaman.com
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lake_heckaman
Project Files on Patreon: https://patreon.com/water__shed

00:00 – Start
01:39 – Patch Overview
03:01 – Cymatics / Chladni Plate Explanation
12:01 – Implementing Chladni Plate Equations in GLSL
20:22 – Render Cymatics with Particle System in TouchDesigner
35:08 – Particles Post Processing
41:07 – Animating Chladni Parameters with Python
47:14 – Audio Reactive Cymatics in TouchDesigner